The real crime in Iraq - -money handed out without question.

[JDPriestly]

I used to write grants including federal, state and community grants for a homeless project. We did a lot of good work, but let me tell you, grants were scarce. And qualifying for them was not easy. Your program had to be very carefully organized to meet the requirements of the grant and you had to present your program so as to show that it met those requirements. In addition, you had to compete with other good programs. Each program was awarded points for having certain components that the government wanted them to have. For example, a program might get points for having a solid volunteer component or psychological counseling. And, of course, you usually had to show that you could raise private money or money from other government sources.

The criteria were always different, always a challenge. And if you were lucky enough to get the grant, you had to file reports on a regular basis in which you had to account for the progress of your program and prove to the government that you were making good use of their precious and scarce and reluctantly given money. It was a lot of work and took a lot of staff time -- and mind you this was for amounts of money that were pitifully small in comparison with the huge demand for services and the drastic needs of the population being served. I don't do that kind of work any more, but, judging from the ever increasing homeless population, I assume that the grant process is still as daunting as it was then, and the money just as scarce and hard to get.

So you will understand that when I heard today's testimony and discussion, I felt sick to my stomach. Here is General Petraeus and the American military just handing out money without grant proposals, without reports on how the money is spent. They are simply bribing people with our tax money, with money that they give only reluctantly to our own homeless population.

We've heard a lot about how Bush's War is a war against the Iraqi people. Today I realized that it is really a war against the American people, especially the needy among us. If the government is going to give out money in Iraq, let them at least use the same grant process they used to use with homeless projects here.

[cliffordu]

1. Yep. Kicked.

:kick:

[JDPriestly]

5. Thanks.

I don't know whether Americans who have not written or worked with grants realize how much goes into getting them -- at least for secular groups. It may be that the grant process has been simplified, but I doubt it. You go through hoops to get relatively small amounts of money. Apparently it's no big deal to hand out millions to Iraqi tribal chiefs.

[cliffordu]

7. I worked in grant-based Alchohol and drug treatment for street kids

for years. I know what has to go into getting grant money.

You should see what I have to go through for food stamps now......every three months.

[grasswire]

2. how much of it ended up in American pockets over there?

I recall that Simone Ledeen was one of those young inexperienced people who was given huge responsibility over there to administer some program. (The daughter of traitor Ledeen, her father.) She was an actual freeper; a posting member of freerepublic.com.

[JDPriestly]

6. Good question.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

3. ATTA BOY BROWNIE

[guruoo]

4. US Treasury flew 12B in cash to Iraq which was then "handed out from the backs of pickup trucks"

An armed guard poses beside pallets of $100 bills in Baghdad. Almost $12bn in cash was spent by the US-led authority.

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent... (more)

The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"

...

"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.

"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds." The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500m in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'."



http://www.democrats.com/How-the-US-Sent-12-Billion-in-Cash-to-Iraq-and-Watched-it-Vanish

[Solly Mack]

8. You don't really think the bulk of that money went to ordinary Iraqis do you?

Some went to tribal leaders, yes. And some went to members of the "Iraqi government", yes. And the US military set up pay-lines where they handed out 20 US dollars to every man in line as far back as 2003. (true) And yes, money is being paid out to bribe people (primarily leaders of some description) not to kill Americans...but instead to fight each other.

But 8 billion missing here and 9 billion missing there? (repeatedly)

So, Mr Bremer, where did all the money go?

That money was stolen..and stolen by those in a position to steal it. All that money and no paper trial...it was a field day of theft...and it was designed to be just that way.

and then we hear how "Iraq needs to pay for..." the "reconstruction"....yet look at all the money stolen from Iraq by America, the American installed "Iraqi government", both "US-led provisional authorities" and otherwise, and "contractors"

Yes, Bush's "war" is also against the American people. But he's waging that war on the backs of the Iraqis and in their front and back yards....with their lives and stealing their resources as well as stealing American resources and American lives. But America isn't being bombed day in and day out...our "shock and awe" didn't come in the form of bombs raining down the from the sky. September 11th was one horrible day, and though it is a day the survivors will always relive, the Iraqis live that same day over and over and over and over again....with no chance of healing and with ever decreasing odds of survivor because the bombs never stop. The dying never stops. Every day is "911" in Iraq. Every.Single.Day.

That's what is truly meant by "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here"....Iraq is nothing more than ground zero for the Bush administration to put into practice all their fucked up ideas about government, to justify their abuses, and have an excuse for all their crimes. The country of Iraq and its people were just handy for the Bush admin. to achieve their aims of the last 8 years. Bush started a fight in Iraq...for lies...just to have an excuse for everything else they have done. (both in America and around the world)


Iraq hasn't stopped being a cash-cow for those still in the position to steal either. American tax-dollars that could have been spent on the needy in America (but to be honest, most likely would not have been) are not being spent on the Iraqis, as a whole, either. Somebody is getting rich...but it ain't "the people" of Iraq (or America)